ukraine: glibivka

easter is a national holiday in ukraine...the holiday is sunday, and everyone gets monday off as well...to celebrate easter, ukraine follows the orthodox calendar (for those in the west who are catholic, i don't know how it works, or maybe they celebrate easter according to the catholic calendar, then get another easter a few weeks later?)...most years this means we get a day off a few weeks after 'western' easter...this year, western easter and orthodox easter fell on the same day...i don't know how often that happens, but it probably isn't very often...it was a bit odd for me to see facebook posts of friends about easter and it matched up with 'my' holiday weekend...

i'd made plans a few weeks ago to travel with a couple girlfriends, we bought train tickets...our original plan was to go east, to dnipropetrovsk and zhaporhysia...unfortunately, political events made that travel plan seem like not the best idea...so we cancelled those tickets and figured out another idea...of course, we waited until the last minute to do this, so there weren't many options...
one of the girls found us a room in a cottage in a resort complex along the kyiv reservoir, a bit north of kyiv...there are a bunch of these resort complexes along the reservoir...they all have recreation options, conference facilities, etc...

saturday morning i was running late to meet the girls, i felt horrible about it...they'd booked a taxi for a specific time...the taxi took us to a complex about an hour from the city centre, near a town called glibivka...the town isn't known for anything, it's just a town...there are a bunch of these resort complexes in the area, all along the water...they offer  bike rental, horseback riding, sauna, massage, table tennis, etc...we checked in, and immediately scheduled massages and sauna time...
the weather was crap, so we sat on our porch, drank tea, and had snacks until it was time for our massages...

the massages were short, but felt sooooo good...the experience was not what i expected, but i would still do it again...when i walked into the room the massage therapist told me to get ready, and hop on the table...he worked on my back the whole time, it felt sooooo good...:) the girls each had their turn after i finished...
after massages we picked up the key to the sauna...we had our own private sauna for two hours, how awesome is that?!?! we tried to stay in the sauna for 15 minutes each time, then cool down out in the sitting room for a bit after each 'session'...i didn't bring enough water, i was a bit worried about getting really dehydrated...i love sauanas...after the sauna, i felt like a queen...

we had dinner in the restaurant of the complex...nothing noteworthy, nothing awful...the only bit of note was that the service was rather slow...all of us were tired after dinner, we all crashed early...
the next morning we'd planned to go to an easter service at a nearby church...we thought a service started at 0645 or so, the complex said they would transport us...it turned out we got the time wrong, we missed it by an hour...which means we woke up at 0600 on a holiday weekend for no good reason!!
instead of going back to sleep we made tea and took it to benches near the water to enjoy...the sun was showing itself beautifully behind clouds, everything was lovely...

eventually we decided it was time for breakfast...since it was a holiday weekend, and this was the holiday, this breakfast was included in the price of our room...easter breakfast...it ended up being quite a bit of food...i definitely ate more than i should've...
after breakfast we had another cup of tea out by the water, then figured out where to go to rent bikes...
after adjusting for size and adding air to my tires, we took off down the road...i think it was about 3 kilometers to the town of glibivka...nothing remarkable about this town, but susannah and i love seeing a 'normal' town...maryna must've thought we were crazy each time we got off our bikes to take pictures...

we saw an unfinished church, a giant wood pile, revolution street, chickens, tulips, wells, etc...as we rode over a bridge we saw lots of men fishing...
2 hours later, we rode back to the complex and turned in our bikes...another cup of tea out by the water to relax...then we went for a walk in the woods across the highway from our complex...maryna told us the woods are really really old...you can see plenty of places where trees have been cut down to be used for someone's dacha, but most of what we saw had been there for a loooong time...you can almost feel the history, it's awesome...i wish we'd had more time...

we loved the atmosphere...at times it was totally silent, at times we could hear various birds...awesomeness...
after we came back to the complex we decided to use the sauna again...this day was warmer, so susannah and i had a much more challenging 2 hours...we did 15 minute 'sessions' again, but it was much more difficult to cool down in between...we ended up turning down the temperature of the sauna, and even then it was really hard to stay in the sauna the entire 15 minutes each time...i think we figured out that we did 6 15-minute sessions...my face was sooooo red!

dinner was again at the restaurant, and again nothing remarkable...
the next morning we showed up for breakfast thinking it was included in our price again...unfortunately, it wasn't...oh well...
after breakfast we had another cup of tea and enjoyed some of our last moments of vacation...we had an extra hour, so after packing up our stuff, we went for one last walk in the woods...
after our walk a taxi took us back to kyiv...